Four Years in France Part 17

Now came the difficulty to conceal from my restored and surviving son the death of his brother. Our mourning dress was accounted for, by telling him that an aunt of his mother's had died and left her a large legacy; and he was amused by discussing and settling how the legacy should be spent in Italy. Often has his mother turned aside to hide her tears while answering his inquiries after his brother, and while entering into details to make her accounts more credible. Such traits of heroism have been admired in a Roman matron: but heroism is more common than is usually supposed. I said to him, "Really we are very much obliged to you; but for our waiting for your recovery, we should now be on our road to Italy."--"And my brother? is he well enough for the journey?" I was stupified, and unable so far to recover myself as to tell a falsehood. "He will be no hindrance."

A new alarm succeeded. Convalescence after such a malady, uncured for during more than the first third of its period, was no easy matter. "He will die after all," said Breugne, "of what the English physicians call _phthisis in toto corpore_. I order for him exactly the quant.i.ty of food that may nourish him; for it is not by what we eat, but by what we can turn into nutriment, that the body is supported. The nurse has given him more than enough, and the organs of nutrition cannot do their office with what surcharges them. We must have him down stairs: that old witch must not be left alone with him." He had in fact asked _Goody Grope_, as he called her, to give him to eat; and she, after discharging her conscience by refusing, ended by complying. Breugne made me observe that his pulse intermitted. I counted thirty-nine pulsations; the fortieth failed. "If he were descending into a malady,"--I cannot well translate his French, as he hesitated in the choice of his words,--"I should call the symptom fatal; but as he is rising from one, it may not be of such evil omen--mauvais augure."

An inference may hence be drawn of no small import in the conduct of life. How pernicious it must be, even in health, to eat too much; since, a case of debility supposed, a little quant.i.ty more than enough hindered the nutritive effect of the food, and in truth very nearly proved fatal!

My son was now about to become again one of the family. Two days before this took place, I told him that his brother was gone into the country, for change of air, to the house of a friend whom I named. I antic.i.p.ated by two days, lest the story should seem invented for the occasion. On the first of November, he was carried down stairs on a mattress, and laid on a sofa, while his bed was prepared in the cabinet by the side of the salon. "I will have him again put into bed as soon as possible,"

said Breugne; "le lit est la force du malade."[85] His sisters were shocked at his appearance; terror overcame their joy; they seemed to doubt whether he too had not died and come forth again from the grave: for myself, I wondered where his muscles, veins, and arteries had retired, so complete seemed the adhesion of the skin to the bones. Three days afterwards, a.s.ses milk was ordered and found to agree with him; and Breugne cried out exultingly, "J'ai cinq sur sept pour moi."[86] This was, however, but little more than two to one in his favour.

Many awkward circ.u.mstances might have led him to suspect the death of his brother. The secret was now to be kept by six or seven persons whose looks betrayed it, although their tongues were silent: nay, silence was itself of all circ.u.mstances the most suspicious. I dictated a message to Antoine as from the Marquis de ----, with whom Kenelm was supposed to be living in the country. This message was to convey a favourable account of his health, and Antoine was ordered to deliver it in the salon. He had not courage to speak loud enough, and I made a sign to him to talk so as to be heard by _him_ in the cabinet: this gave him the air of one acting a part. The Marquis and Marquise entered soon after. This was unlucky: they could not have sent a message from their country-house while they were in the town. They approached the door of the cabinet. I said, "Madame, you bring us good news from your campagne?" Through pity or astonishment at my resolution, she had not the force to give any answer.

I said to M. Breugne, "What am I to do? He suspects his brother's death: he asked me yesterday, 'Why does he not write? is he not well enough to write?' The suspicion will irritate his feelings, and do him more harm than the certainty." Breugne said, "I will not take on myself the responsibility of advising you; you must judge for yourself: you know his character better than I do."

On the tenth of November I said to him, "You have had the same illness as your brother, and have recovered from it. Your present illness is excessive weakness owing to your having been so long neglected; there is no reason to fear the same--" Incautiously in my perturbation I had gone further than I had intended to do at first. This was enough: the secret was revealed, and we were relieved from this cruel embarra.s.sment.

Four weeks after the fever had left him, he was able to walk a few steps. A month is sufficient for complete convalescence after the typhus in ordinary cases. On the twelfth of December he went out in a carriage.

On the twentieth I left my house for the purpose of selling my furniture by auction, and went to the Hotel d'Europe for better air, and to be near the promenade. At this inn we staid ten days, till the strength of the convalescent should be sufficiently restored to enable us to set out on our long-delayed journey. At length I engaged a voiture, having most happily found one, as if made on purpose for my service, new, well-built and warm, with stout horses, and a respectable coachman.

To obtain a pa.s.sport to quit France is a matter, not of difficulty, but of many formalities. The demandant must first make his application to the munic.i.p.ality, stating his reasons for leaving the kingdom, the country to which he is going, and the point at which he means to quit France. The munic.i.p.ality notifies these particulars to the prefect, who addresses himself to the minister for foreign affairs, who, after due perquisition at the legation of the country of the demandant, if a foreigner, (for the same formalities, this inquiry excepted only, are observed in regard to the French themselves,) authorizes the prefect to grant the pa.s.sport required. I stated that I was going to Nice to restore the health of my son and of my afflicted family. All that family had made frequent visits to the tomb of Henry Kenelm, except his brother, whose visit was to be one of farewell on the day before our departure from Avignon, which was now fixed for the last of the year. On the 30th of December, a funeral was to take place at two in the afternoon: the hour suited, and we were willing, as requested, to take that opportunity of finding the gate of the cemetery open. We went to the cemetery at the appointed hour; the funeral was delayed till after sunset: it would have been dangerous, for one whose health was so imperfectly established, to wait longer, and expose himself to the cold of the evening; and he quitted this city of death without being able to pay his last duties at the tomb of a beloved brother.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] Sir, you must not do that: the tapers connect the family with what is doing in the church.

[83] Whereabouts are we?

[84] He will not die for that.

[85] Bed is the strength of a sick person.

[86] I have five to seven for me.

CHAP. XX.

I have mentioned the strong emotion which I felt in pa.s.sing through the village of St. Clair betwixt Rouen and Pontoise, as also the surprise excited by the view of the features of an infant Jesus drawn by my departed son immediately after his return from England. It is now the proper time to explain to what I then referred. In saying that I alluded to a _dream_, I know that I expose myself to ridicule: to pay regard to dreams is justly considered as a sign of imbecillity of mind, and generally condemned as superst.i.tious: how far I may be exempted from these censures by the prophetic nature of my dream, I leave to be determined by those who shall compare it with the events lately narrated, which seem to me to form a striking and full interpretation of it. I no more affect the character of a dreamer, than that of a visionary: but I am not deterred, by the fear of being laughed at, from believing, in the case of the _vision_, the evidence of my senses, and that a dream, portraying things future, ought to be distinguished from the ordinary phenomena of that inexplicable faculty, (if that which is involuntarily exercised may be called a faculty,) of our fearful and wonderful nature.

On Thursday, the 27th of November, 1817, being then at Lincoln, I dreamed that I was in a large, lofty room, which was entirely unknown to me.

In the month of October, 1818, I hired a house at Avignon in which was a salon, exactly resembling that of the dream; the situation of the doors, windows, and chimney, and the appearance of them just the same.

A person came out of the cabinet by the side of this salon, with whom I was unacquainted, but whom I supposed to be an English catholic priest: he wore a black coat, and had boots on: I did not observe that he had with him any hat: he was of rather less than the middle age of life.

This person resembled in features and expression of countenance the infant Jesus drawn, three years afterwards, by my elder son: my recollection did not serve me to recognise the likeness till after I had seen my son's _drawing_ from the _engraving_: in the cabinet, before-mentioned, was usually hung a small crucifix.

This priest approached me in a serious, but civil and friendly manner: two chairs were near us, not far from one of the windows: I invited him to be seated.

The chairs were like those I had at Avignon; they were placed near the window: had this scene been represented as in the winter season, they would have been near the fire: it was in the summer season that the events occurred, which I suppose to have been now presignified. As it was I who invited the other to sit down, it seems that I thought myself to be in my own house.

The priest then said to me, in a slow and distinct voice, "You are to found a new order in the church, to be called 'The Society of the Penitents of St. Clair;' you know under what rule; but not _sub peccato_;" he repeated "not _sub peccato_," and, rising from his seat, took out his watch, an ordinary silver watch with small seals, looked at it, and returned it to its place: then taking leave of me, he pa.s.sed, not through the door of the stairs, but into the second salon.

When the priest said, "You know the rule," I understood to what he referred, without further explanation oh his part. When much younger than I was at this epoch, I had thought of a rule of life, on the observance of which it might be useful and desirable to form a society: but I never had the presumption to conceive the idea of founding a new order in the church. I will confess, so little were my dispositions at this time penitential, that when the word "penitents" was p.r.o.nounced, it was to me displeasing and repulsive. I had regarded the rule which the priest said, "you know," with a view to bodily health and temporal convenience, not with any reference to religious mortification. I had not thought of the rule for many years past, and had always considered the formation of a society on the rule as an impracticable project. St.

Clair's name was unknown to me till I referred to "Butler's Lives of the Saints." I had read of Sta. Clara, but was perfectly sure it was not she that was intended.

When the priest had left the room, I saw, seated and eating at a large round table, placed, not in the centre, but towards one side of the room, a young man, whom I went up to, and conversed with: he talked to me of his sins, and his penitential dispositions, and wept much: I asked him if he would observe the rule of the society, not telling him what it was, but supposing him to know it: he answered in the affirmative, but hesitatingly, as if he knew he should be prevented. His dress perplexed me; it was white, loose over his shoulders and before him; without coat, vest, or waistcoat; he seemed to have nothing on but this shapeless white mantle, and his shirt. He rose suddenly from the table at which he had continued to sit while talking with me: his long white robe flowed behind him: he gathered it up round his knees as he went away, and pa.s.sed through the door, and hastily down stairs.

I had no such table in England as this here described, but I had such an one at Avignon. I have remarked in my narrative, that, on the day of my son's death, this table was pushed aside to make room for the sofa turned from the light by desire of my younger son. I have spoken of the scruples of my elder son, and of the distress and uneasiness they caused both to him and to me. The dress of the young man with whom I conversed in my dream, was, in truth, (though then I knew it not, and had been accustomed to see another sort of mortuary clothing,) the habiliments of the dead in France.

I followed this young man to the top of the stairs: my family, or persons whom I considered as such, were behind me: the staircase was winding in such a manner that we could not see to the bottom of the stairs; where we stood was a staircase to the second floor on the left hand; a window to the right: all this as at Avignon.

As I stood looking down the stairs, my younger son said to me, "I'll go after him:" accordingly he went quickly down the stairs. At this interval, looking through the window, I saw a most beautiful garden, with fruit-trees, and a light as of the reflection of the brightest sunshine: it was reflected sunshine; the window is to the north. My younger son came up stairs again, and standing by me, but turning to look down stairs, and then turning to look at me, said, "He is gone."

I have related that, on the day of the death of my elder son, the younger took to his bed, ill of the same typhus fever; and that, during his illness, that supernatural light was seen which a.s.sured us of the happy state of the elder. The face of my younger, when he spoke to me in the dream, was nearly on a level with mine: at the age at which he was at the time of the dream in 1817, he was not higher than my shoulder; soon after his illness, he grew to be taller than me, but in 1821 his stature was such as it appeared in my dream.

We returned into the room: those who had followed me to the top of the stairs were in deep mourning, and it was understood we were about to undertake a long journey. We set off for Italy at the end of the year, the eventful year 1821.

I awoke, and found it was near eight o'clock in the morning.

The scenes exhibited in this dream, and the events prefigured by it, according to my interpretation, are here set in juxtaposition: the impression it made on my apprehension was lively and distinct as reality itself. I relate it, because it is immediately connected with the subject of my narrative. In the rule referred to by my imaginary interlocutor there is nothing that I desire to keep secret, but to explain it at this time might be foreign to my purpose: besides, quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis; and I should be loth to intrude on any what they may not be willing to read. Dr. Johnson said, "There is often more in the t.i.tle than in all the rest of the book;" but it may be unfair to put into a book what cannot in any wise be augured from the t.i.tle. Yet, as the rule was enjoined in a dream which had relation to my story, as the knowledge of the rule may help to form an opinion of the nature and character of the dream itself, and as moreover it may be told in very few words, I will here declare it.

The three great enemies of youth and of mankind,--the three chief sources of moral evil, of intellectual debility and derangement, and of corporal sufferance--are, sins against chast.i.ty, drunkenness, and gaming. Early in life, I made this observation; let any one, who doubts the truth of it, cast his eyes on the world. Dr. Cheyne's works "on health" and "on regimen," had persuaded me that animal food was pernicious to health and to all the faculties and dispositions which depend on health: it excites and gratifies the appet.i.te to such a degree, that few, very few, feed upon it without gluttony. Let any one then observe chast.i.ty--abstain from animal food, and from wine and vinous spirits, renounce all play for money, or engaging stakes on hazard, and he will conform to the rule "of the penitents of St. Clair."

When the priest said, and repeated, "not sub peccato," I of course understood him to mean, not that chast.i.ty was not of precept and obligatory on all as a Christian and moral virtue, but that sins against it should not be aggravated by being an infraction of the rule. The other parts of the rule regard things in themselves indifferent: among the several persons whom I have known that abstained from animal food, some there were who did so as believing it unlawful to take away life: I admired their practice, but disapproved their reasoning; the Author of Life has himself permitted it: on that ground it is justifiable; though it might be an amusing question, whence they who disbelieve all revelation derive authority to put to death these creatures except in case of self-defence, as when attacked by a bear or a tiger. The moderate use of alcohol is lawful, medicinal even; to interest and amuse ourselves by engaging a moderate stake on hazard is perfectly innocent; but he who renounces vinous spirits and gaming, strikes at the root of many mischiefs and many perturbations.

What I have related, I have related as it happened: the dream and the reference in the dream to my opinions, could neither be sought for, nor procured, nor prepared by any act of mine: my opinions here recorded have this merit, that, according to our Lincolnshire phraseology, "they won't do n.o.body no harm," and this is merit enough; merit, not negative, but positive; for the phrase always implies the expectation of a great benefit. In the hope that they may do somebody some good, I leave the matter to favourable or unfavourable acceptation; and prepare to narrate my journey to Nice,--that delicious climate, where is,

----ver perpetuum atque alienis mensibus aestas.

CHAP. XXI.

We drove out of the western gate of Avignon, and immediately turned to the left hand. I said mentally, "Adieu, my dear son! may I and all this family be reunited to thee in a better world." During the last six weeks we had in some degree recovered from the terror and affliction of the preceding period; but a final separation from him we so tenderly and deservedly loved struck us with a feeling of depression, which we endeavoured to surmount and disguise from each other lest the grief of one should be the grief of all. "Are you well seated? do you feel any cold?" and soon after, "How far is it to the bridge of the Durance?" by such questions we tried in vain to conceal what the looks of all betrayed. It was a relief to us to arrive at a country we had not yet seen.

Antoine accompanied us: in the year 1813, the year following the campaign of Moscow, being then of the age for military service, he had been summoned to leave his native plains of Picardy to fight under the banners of Napoleon in the campaign of Dresden. "Vous l'avez vu, l'Empereur?" he was asked. "Oui."--"Ou donc?"--"Sur le champ de bataille sans doute."[87] Antoine was one of those raw recruits, who, as Napoleon declared, fought more bravely than any men he had ever seen to fight during seventeen years, that he had commanded the armies of France.

After the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, Antoine was taken prisoner by the Austrians in an affair near Dresden, and sent into the interior of their country. "Into what part of their country?" I inquired of him. "I do not know." I, in my quality of inquisitive traveller, expressed surprise at his want of curiosity, and asked the names of the princ.i.p.al towns he had past through. "Obliged to climb great hills, loaded like a mule, huddled with my comrades at night, into a grenier, I had something else to do than to amuse myself with inquiring the names of towns: I do, however, remember that one town we were taken to was called Pest." It may be inferred that the hills he climbed were the Carpathian mountains. If the English public should find that they are overwhelmed by "Tours," and "Travels," and "France," and "Italy," they have nothing to do but to send us all abroad with knapsacks on our backs. Fiat experimentum. Antoine was headstrong and full of jests, but faithful, honest, and attached. I think I pay him a great compliment when I say he resembled in character a Milesian Irishman.

On account of our invalid, we were to travel by easy journeys: Aix was too far off for one day. We slept at Orgon, the half-way house, an ill-built inn, where we found good fires, good cooking, and good beds.

The next morning the frost had set in: I hurried the invalid into the coach, and we turned our backs on the bise. Where we stopt at mid-day my children began to show some little expansion of good spirits: it was New-year's-day, and this calculation seemed to make the day different from those that had gone before. Their attempts at renewed hilarity manifested themselves in fantastical disputes about their repast. We had taken tea and coffee in the morning: I required a repet.i.tion of it: some disliked the same thing over again; some wanted fruit and their usual mid-day dessert; others "would have a dejeune a la fourchette." It ended by ordering all that was asked for by all.

At Orgon we pa.s.sed through a room of the inn, of which the windows were broken. The door of our room could neither be shut nor opened without trouble and loss of time: such are "the miseries of human life" in a fine climate: in England these inconveniences would not be endured for an hour in the winter: the glazier would be sent for in case of a broken pane as surely as water would be called for if the house were on fire. I have been a.s.sured that, if one could be contented to pa.s.s the winter without stirring out of doors, he would feel less cold at St.

Petersburgh than any where else in Europe. Where nature does least for man, man does most for himself. Ananas or pine-apples are reared at Archangel: I saw none in the south of France or Tuscany. Our anomalous repast detained us too long, and it was almost dark when we arrived, at five o'clock, at a handsome, palace-like-looking inn, on the Corso at Aix.

It is a pleasant, airy, well-built town, so surrounded by hills, that, in our walks next morning, we felt no cold. I expected to find hot baths here, but was somewhat surprised to see a great basin of hot water in the Corso, at which, as well as at other fountains in different parts of the town, the washer-women ply their trade without the expense of fuel: clean linen may here be called, by a perverted application of Burke's phrase, "the unbought grace of life." The public baths are not so convenient nor on so large a scale as I expected. We took a cursory view of Roman remains of Aquae s.e.xtiae. To the cathedral, a fine old structure, is annexed a curious and perfect ancient temple which serves as the baptistery.